{"id":46,"date":"2015-12-14T23:39:39","date_gmt":"2015-12-15T04:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/?p=46"},"modified":"2016-01-08T11:01:29","modified_gmt":"2016-01-08T16:01:29","slug":"the-war-on-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/2015\/12\/14\/the-war-on-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"The &#8220;War On Christmas&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net\/hphotos-xfp1\/v\/t1.0-9\/12321316_939877512761521_6523173982282798774_n.jpg?oh=4fc0351c568c2bfd395a5a9ae726ec8d&amp;oe=56DB1736\" alt=\"Polar Bear cookies\" \/><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>I saw this image on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/fathernathan\/photos\/a.437326446349966.1073741826.435917046490906\/939877512761521\/?type=3&amp;theater\">Facebook<\/a> and had to laugh\u2014it&#8217;s a clever take on the whole Starbuck&#8217;s Red Cup \/ War on Christmas thing. But underlying this is a sad fact\u2014there are people out there who are searching for a reason to be offended at this time of year.<\/p>\n<h5>NEWS FLASH, PEOPLE\u2014THERE IS NO &#8220;WAR ON CHRISTMAS&#8221; !!!<\/h5>\n<p>If somebody wishes you &#8220;Happy Holidays&#8221; or &#8220;Season&#8217;s Greetings&#8221; rather than &#8220;Merry Christmas,&#8221; it&#8217;s almost a certainty they are NOT disrespecting you or attacking your religious beliefs. Instead, they&#8217;re (gasp) <strong>wishing you joy and happiness.\u00a0<\/strong>The point of well-wishes is to be an expression of good will from the well-wisher, not to be an acknowledgement of the recipients beliefs. Especially as those beliefs just might not be known to the well-wisher. The polite thing to do is to accept the wishes offered gratefully, in the spirit intended.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, I&#8217;m seeing a lot of people posting &#8220;Merry Christmas&#8221; messages and images, not in the spirit of the season, but as an aggressive gambit, almost daring you not to say it back. It&#8217;s a volley in the made-up &#8220;war,&#8221; and frankly, it&#8217;s irritating as all hell.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I&#8217;m not going to deny that there&#8217;s a fringe out there who think that &#8220;Merry Christmas&#8221; is politically incorrect and want to see its use avoided in public. Well, <em>that&#8217;s just stupid.<\/em>\u00a0(Yes, Virginia, there is liberal stupidity, too &#8230;) But to suggest there&#8217;s a liberal &#8220;War on Christmas&#8221; because of a fringe position is like claiming there&#8217;s a conservative &#8220;War on whatever&#8221; because of a Westboro Baptist Church protest. The fringe is not representative. The fringe is often the stupid that needs stamping out.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So this holiday season, help <span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">#stampoutstupid <\/span>by accepting greetings of the season in the spirit intended, and by offering greetings in a spirit of good-will, and not to make a political point of things. The correct response to &#8220;Merry Christmas&#8221; is &#8220;Thank you,&#8221; with an optional &#8220;and the same to you,&#8221; regardless of your religious beliefs. The response to &#8220;Happy Hanukkah&#8221; is exactly the same. Ditto for Happy Holidays, Season&#8217;s Greetings, Happy Kwanzaa, or whatever. Being offended by a holiday greeting is a choice\u2014and a pretty stupid one, if you ask me.<\/p>\n<p>Happy Festivus.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; I saw this image on Facebook and had to laugh\u2014it&#8217;s a clever take on the whole Starbuck&#8217;s Red Cup \/ War on Christmas thing. But underlying this is a sad fact\u2014there are people out there who are searching for a reason to be offended at this time of year. NEWS FLASH, PEOPLE\u2014THERE IS NO [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[9],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101,"href":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions\/101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stampoutstupid.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}